2. In tracing the belief in demons we must draw a sharp distinction between popular views and systematic doctrine.(560) During the Biblical era the people believed in goat-like spirits roaming the fields and woods, the deserts and ravines, whom they called _Seirim_—hairy demons, or satyrs,—and to whom they sacrificed in fear and trembling.(561) As Ibn Ezra ingeniously pointed out in his commentary, Azazel was originally a desert demon dwelling in the ravines near Jerusalem, to whom a scapegoat was offered at the opening of the year, a rite preserved in the Day of Atonement cult of the Mosaic Code.(562) In fact, in ancient Babylon, Syria, and Palestine diseases and accidents were universally ascribed to evil spirits of the wilderness or the nether world. The Bible occasionally mentions these evil spirits as punitive angels sent by God. In the more popular view, which is reflected by apocryphal and rabbinical literature, and which was influenced by both the Babylonian and Persian religions, they appear in increasing numbers and with specific names. Each disease had its peculiar demon. Desolate places, cemeteries, and the darkness of night were all peopled by superstition with hosts of demons (_Shedim_), at whose head was _Azazel_, _Samael_; _Beelzebub_, the Philistine god of flies and of illness;(563) _Belial_, king of the nether world;(564) or the Persian _Ashma Deva_ (Evil Spirit), under the Hebrew name of _Ashmodai_ or _Shemachzai_.(565) The queen of the demons was _Lilith_ or _Iggereth bath Mahlath_, “the dancer on the housetops.”(566) The Essenes seem to have made special studies of both demonology and angelology, believing that they could invoke the good spirits and conjure the evil ones, thus curing various diseases, which they ascribed to possession by demons. While these exorcisms are not so common in the Talmud as they are in the New Testament, there remain many indications that such practices were followed by Jewish saints and believed by the people. Often the rabbis seem to have considered them the work of “unclean spirits,” which they endeavored to overcome with the “spirit of holiness,” and particularly by the study of the Torah.(567)